Ratan Tata is now special advisor at Jungle Ventures

The $10 mn early stage venture capital founded in 2012 has made 30 investments so far, mostly in Asia Pacific.Jayadevan PK | July 02, 2015, 08:40 IST

Admitting making mistakes with Nano, Ratan Tata has said that the company wanted to change the perception that it was a "poor man's" vehicle.Tata Sons' Chairman Emeritus Ratan Tata has joined Singapore based venture capital firm as a special advisor. The $10 mn early stage venture capital founded in 2012 has made 30 investments so far, mostly in Asia Pacific.

Zipdial, which was acquired by Twitter, CrayonData and Travelmob which was acquired by Nasdaq listed HomeAway are part of the fund's portfolio. Jungle Ventures is currently raising a second fund with a bigger corpus.

"In his role as Special Advisor, Mr. Tata has formally committed to spend time with Jungle’s portfolio of companies to help them build category leadership, while being ethically impregnable and culturally strong, in Asian and global markets," Jungle Ventures said in a statement.

After retiring from an active role at the Tata Group, Ratan Tata has been making investments into Indian startups in his personal capacity. He has backed startups including taxi hailing service Ola, Snapdeal, Paytm and a few others.

Gokul Rajaram, the product engineering lead at Square, Lim Dershing, founder at JobCentral and Alon Sobol, the director of ISP/ Telco relationship for Spotify are other advisors at Jungle Ventures.